There is neither causation nor progression in the
Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very beginning; the _incredulus
odi_ is felt from the first line. The sensuality and the thirst after
knowledge are unconnected with each other. Mephistopheles and Margaret are
excellent; but Faust himself is dull and meaningless. The scene in
Auerbach's cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best; that on the
Brocken is also fine; and all the songs are beautiful. But there is no
whole in the poem; the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large
part of the work is to me very flat. The German is very pure and fine.
The young men in Germany and England who admire Lord Byron, prefer Goethe
to Schiller; but you may depend upon it, Goethe does not, nor ever will,
command the common mind of the people of Germany as Schiller does. Schiller
had two legitimate phases in his intellectual character:--the first as
author of the Robbers--a piece which must not be considered with reference
to Shakspeare, but as a work of the mere material sublime, and in that line
it is undoubtedly very powerful indeed. It is quite genuine, and deeply
imbued with Schiller's own soul. After this he outgrew the composition of
such plays as the Robbers, and at once took his true and only rightful
stand in the grand historical drama--the Wallenstein;--not the intense
drama of passion,--he was not master of that--but the diffused drama of
history, in which alone he had ample scope for his varied powers.
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